Yesterday morning brought low, gray skies, the world outside looking dark and sleepy. So dark, so sleepy that I was amazed to see my bedside clock reading 8:30 when I opened my eyes. (Oops!) The first eight-hour stretch of quality sleep in several days -- a kind of decadence I could learn to live with.
Dragged my body out of bed, into the shower, then out to the gym for a session of sweaty torture. Afterward, back outside, the air had taken a colder turn, feeling more like a morning in early January, while existence in the barrio had finally returned to its normal, busy, weekday self, the holidays at long last over, life moving on.
Changed clothes, bought a paper, found a local morning joint for some caffeine and chow. Tried to ignore front page news stories about the seeming failure of the peace process with ETA, the stoppage of oil pipelines to Germany and Poland by Belarus, blah blah blah. Hard to do with the place's TV tuned to morning newscasts, talking heads painting the same unappealing pictures. Buried my face in more innocuous articles, sipped at coffee, nibbled at a croissant. Slowly began to feel vaguely human.
The day's big event: the evening's return to classes, rebooting my ongoing struggle to drag my Spanish to a reasonably functional level. A good class, turned out -- intimate, just me and the 30ish French guy who's been a classmate since early November. Us and Eva, the instructor -- intelligent, good-humored, distractingly cute -- who gave us a rigorous language workout.
This morning: gray once more, and chilly. With the added bonus of no running water -- it having been shut off sometime during the night by anonymous city workers looking to disrupt existence. No shower, no shave, no heat for the flat. Until around nine, anyway, when a friendly fanfare of moaning, vibrating pipes announced the return to normalcy. Clothes immediately flew into the washer, the day got underway.
Midweek, one more Wednesday -- normal, nothing exceptional, but feeling just fine.
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Mannequin in doorway to funky haircutting joint --
the barrio of Chueca, Madrid:
España, te quiero.
rws 1:57 PM [+]
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